The polar light that never sets, fair ornament of the first heaven, stands firmly fixed, convoying each as a lower star convoys a steersman. The saintly tribe between the Gryphon and that radiance turn to the car as to their rest. One, as if commissioned from above, chants three times: Come, spouse, from Libanus. At the last audit the blessed shall so rise from their caverns. At that elder's voice a hundred ministers of life eternal spring forth. Blessed thou who comest, they cry, and from full hands scatter unwithering lilies over head and round. Dante has seen the eastern clime roseate at daybreak, the sun's face so shaded that the eye long endured it: thus, in a cloud of flowers falling within and outside the car, a virgin appears, white-veiled, olive-wreathed, beneath a green mantle, robed in hue of living flame. Over his spirit, that had so long abode in her presence, no shuddering terror creeps. His eyes have no more knowledge of her; yet a hidden virtue moves from her, and the power of ancient love is strong within him.
No sooner does that heavenly influence smite, which thrilled him even in childhood, than he turns leftward toward Virgil, panting like a babe that flees to his mother's breast. He would have cried that no dram of blood does not quiver, that the old flame throws out clear tokens of reviving fire. But Virgil has bereaved them of himself: Virgil, best-loved father, to whom he gave himself for safety. Not all our prime mother lost avails to save his undewed cheeks from soiling tears. Dante, weep not that Virgil leaves thee: nay, weep thou not yet: behooves thee feel the edge of other sword, and thou shalt weep for that. As an admiral paces prow or stern, he sees, at the sound of his own name, which here he is compelled to register, the virgin stationed on the left of the car. Across the stream she bends her eyes. The veil bound with Minerva's foliage will not let him behold her clearly. With act full royal, still insulting over her thrall, she keeps the bitterest saying back to conclude: Observe me well. I am, in sooth, I am Beatrice. What, and hast thou deigned at last approach the mountain? Knewest not, O man, thy happiness is whole? Down fall his eyes on the clear fount; himself espying, he recoils and seeks the greensward, such a weight of shame on his forehead. Her mien is that stern majesty which surrounds a mother's presence to her awe-struck child: a flavour of bitterness mingled in her pity.
Her words break off. Angels sing In thee, O gracious Lord, my hope hath been, and go no farther than Thou Lord hast set my feet in ample room. He is without sigh or tear until their soft compassion, more than Virgin why so consumest him, turns the ice about his bosom to spirit and water, and anguish gushes through lips and eyelids from the heart. Upon the chariot's right edge she stands immovable and addresses those bright semblances. Ye keep vigil in the eternal day, so that night conveys from you no step; thence with more heed I shape mine answer for his ear, that the sorrow now may equal the transgression. Not through orbs alone but through heavenly largess this man was, in the freshness of his being, so gifted that all better habits had thrived. The kinder the soil, the more evil seed and lack of culture mar it. These looks sometime upheld him; she showed her youthful eyes and led him by their light. Soon as she reached the threshold of her second age and changed mortal for immortal, he left her and gave himself to others. Increase of beauty and virtue circled her; she was less dear, and valued less. His steps turned into deceitful ways, following false images of good that make no promise perfect. Dreams and other inspirations to call him back availed nothing. Such depth he fell that all device was short of his preserving, save that he should view the children of perdition. To this end she visited the purlieus of the dead, and one who has conducted him thus high received her supplications urged with weeping. It were a breaking of God's high decree if Lethe should be past, and such food tasted, without the cost of some repentant tear.
